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COMEDY OF ERRORS;

IN FIVE ACTS;

BY WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

AS PERFORMED AT THE

THEATRE ROYAL, COVENT GARDEN.

PRINTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE MANAGERS

FROM THE PROMPT BOOK.

WITH REMARKS

BY MRS. INCHBALD.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME,

PATERNOSTER ROW.

WILLIAM SAVAGE, PRINTER,

LONDON.

PR

REMARKS.

1243 .14

This play is supposed, by some commentators, to have been among Shakspeare's earliest productions; whilst others will not allow that he had any farther share in the work, than to embellish it with additional words, lines, speeches, or scenes, to gratify its original author, or the manager of the theatre, who might, perhaps, place it in his hands for the purpose of improvement.

In confirmation of this last notion, Steevens has declared "The Comedy of Errors" to be the composition of two very unequal writers; adding-" that the entire play was no work of Shakspeare's, is an opinion which (as Benedick says) fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake."

As it is thus partly decided that the work is not wholly Shakspeare's, full liberty may be taken to find fault with it.

Of all improbable stories, this is the most so. The Ghost in "Hamlet," Witches in " Macbeth," and Monster in "The Tempest," seem all like events in

the common course of nature, when compared to those which take place in this drama. Its fable verges on impossibility, but the incidents which arise from it could never have occurred.

Granting that the two Antipholises and the two Dromios were as like, as twins often are, would their clothes, even the fashion of their habits, have been so exactly alike, that mistakes could have been carried to such extremities? Nay, one brother comes purposely to Ephesus, in search of his twin brother, his own perfect resemblance, and yet, when every accident he encounters tells him directly-that his brother being resident in that very place is the cause of them all, this is an inference he never once draws, but rather chuses to believe the people of the town are all mad, than that the person whom he hoped to find there, is actually one of its inhabitants.

But it is not so much for the impossibilities contained in this comedy, as on account of its rhyme, and, as Blackstone has termed them, "long hobbling verses," which makes it suspected of bearing the great poet's name without due cause.

Whether Shakspeare wrote the doggerel speeches of the twin attendants, and other inferior passages, must still remain in some doubt; but that he was the author of Egeon's narrative at the beginning of the play, and the entire character of the Abbess Emilia, can be little mistrusted; though not even in these parts are there any very powerful marks of his genius.

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